


here to stay

by ffantastic



Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M, Other characters mentioned - Freeform, yes the title is supposed to be from winter wonderland
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-25
Updated: 2015-08-09
Packaged: 2018-03-03 12:33:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2850977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ffantastic/pseuds/ffantastic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John and Dave are snowed in. It's Christmas.</p>
<p>It's not as much of an accident as it could have been.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. consider this a prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [qkind](https://archiveofourown.org/users/qkind/gifts).



> i hope this is an acceptable christmas present!! might turn into half birthday present, but whatever.

When the car pulled to a stop in front of the house and there was so much snow that it was a hassle to get the door to open, that should have been a warning sign.

But Dave wasn't thinking about warning signs, he was thinking of the snow that was probably better viewed from inside the house, especially considering he wasn't wearing anything particularly warm yet. What would you wear thick clothes for in a car with heating, that had, over the last few hours of this almost- road trip become so stuffy it was hard to get enough oxygen to differentiate right from left?

John had apparently not had that problem, and everything else would have been worrying, because he'd been driving for the last part. They'd taken a wrong turn maybe three or four times in total. Two of those had been Dave's fault, because the first time he wasn't sure which road to take, he'd slowed down, and the asshole behind him had found it necessary to overtake with a honk that still sounded vicious in his ears two hours later, when he'd had the problem the second time and took the wrong turn instead of taking time to think.

All in all, it hadn't been that bad of a trip, even if there were only Christmas songs on the radio and John still did not know the lyrics to “All I want for Christmas is you” after the third time it had been played. Either that, or he simply enjoyed croaking along to every single song as loudly and horribly wrong as possible, which was likely. He was still very chipper and satisfied with himself after hours of the same music.

And then they took another turn, heading straight for the mountains now, visible from where they were driving. John took a break in singing and started praising the Lalondes for remembering they technically owned a house up there in the mountains, fully furnished, always snowy, perfect for celebrating Christmas with a group of friends that were practically family no matter how some of them hadn't had that much contact lately as they used to.

Still family. Didn't matter.

And they were all invited, obviously. No one protested. Not in earnest, at least, and if Dave remembered correctly, he hadn't reacted much at all, not more than he did with other mundane things he was told to react upon, because it was an almost yearly thing. Someone would suggest to meet up, in the summer holidays when they'd still been in school, over Christmas and New Year's, for one of their birthdays. It had never happened, so he saw no reason in even pretending to think it would.

That this time would be different only occurred to Dave when John started talking to him on his own and asked if he'd like to drive there with him, a day before the others, to help get everything ready and stuff. It was suspicions, because Rose had suggested Dave should do this very thing a few days earlier. Spend time with his friend again. Catch up. Have fun decorating the house.

Dave had obviously not done as he'd been told, and even though he acted as if he really didn't want to and told Rose she should be happy he'd accepted the invitation, it wasn't an easy decision where to go with all the cool college parties everyone was begging him to go to, even on Christmas, he had considered it. Considered as in stared at his keyboard for too long, typed and erased, because when he needed them, he couldn't find the right words to say something this simple.

In the end, he'd convinced himself that he had to much other things to do to waste his precious time like this, and closed the window.

And just as he'd almost forgotten about it, he'd received that message, and even though there was no doubt who was the real orchestrator, he went along with it.

So now here he was, fighting a path through snow higher than he'd ever seen it, with the person he still somehow called his best friend beside him. Dave hadn't yet decided whether it was the best or the worst decision he'd ever made to take John up on this offer.

And he shoved the decision as far into the future as he could, just like the snow he was shoveling as if there was any hope of throwing it so hard it would be transported back in time to where no human being existed.

It wasn't five minutes until they'd made it to the door, but Dave felt as if it had been an hour, and he wanted nothing more than collapse on the first halfway soft surface, which turned out to be a couch.

John didn't have any such problems, apparently, he was breathing a bit heavier than normally, but there was still a spring in his step and his voice was devoid of any exhaustion when he reminded Dave that they still needed to get things from the car.

With a sigh, Dave got up from where his butt had just touched the cushions of the convenient couch and followed John outside again, even though he complained the whole way.

John didn't comment on any of his remarks with more than a laugh. Really, he didn't even exactly stop laughing, the volume just increased when Dave happened to say something extraordinarily stupid, to simmer down into almost-quiet chuckling again.

With the front door closed behind his back and all of the bags inside, Dave found himself capable of admitting that it was a nice house. Two floors, enough bedrooms to put some small hotels to shame, a cozy living room in shades of dark red and maroon with a fireplace, kitchen and bathrooms clean and modern. The fridge was even almost full, and Dave wondered how anyone could just _forget_ about a house like this.

It was dark outside by then, and even though that didn't mean night was approaching at this time of the year, at least where they were, Dave was relatively tired and wanted to just eat something, and go to a room where he could be alone with a comfortable mattress and his laptop.

Tiring was maybe not the right word to use when trying to describe how spending time with John was after not being used to it for some time, but it wasn't something Dave could stand for a whole day without some consequences and the wish to get away for just some time. Mostly because it made him remember old times, and with that came things that he thought had been dead and buried years ago. Burying that had been a hard task, those things clung to him like persistent vines, and were hard too kill like cockroaches. He hated the thought that he might be wrong about having killed them all off for good. This was not the first time he'd considered it, but it was far more obvious evidence.

So the only reason he agreed to decorate the living room and the hallways together was because John absolutely insisted to do it before the others would arrive the next day, and because he promised to put a pizza in the oven.

(There was that specific brand of grin that Dave had learned to be suspicious about, but he ignored it, because he had no idea what exactly he should be suspicious of.)

John's method of decorating was surprisingly time-effective. Seeing as there was no tree to hang baubles and every window was already adorned with lights, the house permanently stuck in festive mode, he resolved to throw as much tinsel as possible over everything that would keep still for long enough. He had what appeared to be a near never-ending bag of it, and Dave's job was to trail after him, pick off the excess and make comments about the paintings hidden in darker corners, some bordering disturbing.

He felt as if he was playing bingo, writing whatever convoluted phrase he came up with first in a little square, and crossing them off as they came, but whenever he was supposed to yell bingo, instead John laughed.

Spacing off in these circumstances was not an efficient decision, but from the window in the living room he could see all of the valley below, the lights of the road slowly disappearing down, melting together with those of the small town nestled between the mountains, the snow nearly glowing in the darkness. It was one of those moments that something was so beautiful, the thought of not being able to take a picture was hard to stand.

But Dave had to stand it, because those moments had become increasingly rare in the last year, and thus the designated camera space in his suitcase had been taken up by presents, not to mention that he probably wouldn't have managed to take a decent picture anyway.

Unfortunately, the minute he spent contemplating this had made Dave one of the things that kept still for long enough. Before he had fully registered it, John had covered him in tinsel from head to toe.

He'd got everything off himself as good as he could while still running his mouth about how ridiculous of a move that had been, that he didn't need to be the tree himself to get in the holiday mood. At least John made good of his pizza promise, and they spent dinner with a heated discussion over whether or not shoving candy canes in various orifices would enforce holiday cheer. (The discussion came to no satisfying end, because no one present was willing to sacrifice themselves for science in this way.)

When he changed before going to bed, a few leftover pieces of tinsel fell out of his pants to decorate the pajama he'd bought just for this occasion. It was an ugly christmas sweater pajama-fied, but still not as horribly clingy as that golden decoration proved to be.

The last thing he saw that day was tinsel. When Dave's head sank down in the pillow after he'd closed his laptop, something scratched the back of his neck, and he combed through his hair to find a stray piece. He attempted to fling it away, but it landed next to him on the bed.

It was persistent. Dave didn't know if he liked it that way or not.


	2. s*** goes down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> by that i mean both shit and snow, even if in different ways.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's way too hot (at least where i am), so here's some snow

Dave was staring at a white concrete wall in front of his window.

He couldn't remember this particular wall, he remembered awful music with sentimental lyrics, laughter and pizza and a warm bed. It was weird, because he could have sworn that the day before, there had been nature in front of that window, cold, beautiful nature, no unforgiving wall. He could almost see the wall moving, as if he was staring at an old TV without signal, a life of small beings no bigger than dots all in the flurried movements his sleepy brain was imagining.

Then he blinked. There was a snow storm outside. He should have just buried himself in his blankets again to be warm and cozy and forget about the outside world's shortcomings, but for some reason he leaped out of bed and opened the door with so much fervour that the wall shook a bit and a piece of tinsel fell down from wherever it had hidden to adorn his bed-mussed hair.

Down below, he could hear Jingle Bells chiming too joyfully out of crappy speakers of an old laptop, and if he strained his ears, he could imagine John humming along and trying to imitate the melody with various things found around the kitchen.

A sudden wave of energy overcame him, and a weird feeling that he could put no name to. With the full intention to do something about this feeling, probably make John stop the constant music-blasting and expose him to the monologue about the shitty situation they'd somehow landed themselves in, he went down the stairs and struck the most threatening pose he could in the entrance to the kitchen. Dave wasn't exactly seething, but there was something about the kitchenware tango John was directing that made him just a little bit angry.

John turned around from where he was merrily clinking knives together and immediately cracked up.

“Dave, what are you _wearing_ ”, he managed to wheeze out in between fits of laughter.

Okay, so maybe Dave had forgotten that he was still in his admittedly ridiculous pajamas that had been meant as more of a private source of enjoyment, but John was seriously overdoing it. It wasn't that funny, at least not the type of funny that warranted laughing for several minutes.

Even so, Dave felt the energy slowly dissipate, and he forgot what he had even come downstairs for.

John was slowly calming down, and somehow it was impossible to be angry at him anymore. He was a red-cheeked, still impossibly wide grinning example of why Dave had never been anything but an idiot.

“It's a pajama. I don't know about you, but people usually put those on before they go to bed.”

“Are you asking me what I wear to sleep?”

“No. God, no-”

Before Dave could continue, there was a hand in his hair and unfortunately, speaking was impossible because something was hindering him from breathing. The hand came away with long gold strands in it.

“The tinsel in your hair is maybe even funnier than your dumb pajamas. How did that even get there?”

“No idea, I'll just go shower or something, flush all the tinsel down the drain where it belongs-”

He was already up the stairs and could barely hear John say he'd make breakfast before he closed the bathroom door behind himself.

Shit, he should probably have seen this coming. The hot water did nothing to restore his ability to breathe normally, and it also didn't help the slowing of his heartbeat along. Dave had resolved to get over his stupid crush over two years ago, and all it had taken was one moment of too close, friendly contact, and the castle he had been dismantling stone by stone with a lot of effort had rebuilt itself in seconds, to all its former glory. Maybe even more than its former glory, because when it had first stealthily bought land in his heart and gathered resources, there had been nothing like the possibility of physical closeness, even if it was no more than sitting on opposite sites of a dining table.

His only comfort was that their family and friends were supposed to arrive in a few hours, half a day at most, and with the way their conversations had become a bit short and superficial lately, there would surely be people there who John would rather talk to.

With hair free of decorations, normal clothes and a resolve not to let himself be triggered into any sappy reactions, he went down again, where the smell of pancakes greeted him. Breakfast was a quieter version of dinner, with less nonsensical discussion, mostly because Dave was preoccupied with eating and John with humming along to the music still playing in the background. After the pancakes were gone, John went to look out a window, and when he returned, the look on his face told Dave that he'd liked what he'd seen outside.

“It stopped snowing!”

He might as well have discovered that paradise had arrived, judging by his smile. It was almost unnerving how enthusiastic he was about going outside, about getting Dave to go outside with him, unnerving because while John was not a naturally pessimistic person on a normal day, it was still weird that he was so chipper.

It was hard to untwine the factors that ultimately made Dave agree. Maybe it was that he didn't have anything else to do (but he had never had problems wasting time on his laptop), maybe it was that the snow did look inviting (but he knew that it looked better from the inside), maybe it was the strangely convincing quality of the cheerful attitude John had, magnified to alarmingly so in the last few days.

The snow crunched under his feet, the air was cold enough to freeze the top two layers of skin on his cheeks, but Dave did not yet regret going outside.

He told himself it was because the landscape was unusually pretty and that much oxygen was refreshing after being holed up for so long, but it was hard to ignore how his hand twitched every time John's swung by, and he couldn't exactly breathe deep enough to profit from the crisp winter air.

John seemed to know where he was going, his steps were sure and not too slow, even though there wasn't any apparent destination.

“Where are we even going, the super secret snow shrine where you'll sacrifice me to the wrathful winter gods?”

John turned around, and his smile was almost more blinding than the snow.

“You'll see”, he said, raising his eyebrows in a way that wasn't entirely comforting.

Dave didn't see anything, at least not right away, but he sure felt that they were walking uphill. He thought he'd be cold all through after five minutes, but the slope he had to ascend combined with the almost knee-high snow he had to wade through had him sweating. That was even though he was pretty much just following in John's footsteps, which were more trails than actual footsteps, because he wasn't bothering to lift his feet up far enough to escape the snow.

After about five minutes of Dave concentrating on the rhythm of his breathing and John whistling something that sounded suspiciously like another abhorrent Christmas song, they had apparently arrived at the destination John had had in mind.

The only clue was that John suddenly stopped and turned around. Dave prevented running into him nose first by seconds, and turned around the same way. There was nothing glaringly special about the spot they'd just reached. It was just as white and cold as everywhere else, only maybe far enough up to appreciate the snowed-in house in all its glory. While a pretty sight, it was nothing so spectacular that it made the drying sweat on his skin and the cold that came with it any more bearable.

Dave barely just suppressed a shiver and turned to let John know something along the lines of _what the fuck did you bring me up here for, I don't see a shrine and it's really not the right place for cold-blooded murder, red is damn easy to see on the snow_ , but before he had even opened his mouth enough to let a sound out, he had a face full of snow.

The obnoxious laughter was even more aggravating than the snow slowly sliding down his cheeks, or maybe the most aggravating thing was that his insides still tumbled all over each other at the sound.

So Dave retaliated by throwing a snowball of his own. He didn't have a lot of experience in snowball fights, and his mind was on other things, so it didn't so much hit John in the face as sprinkle him with a bit of snow. It didn't do a lot to quell his laughter, which aggravated Dave even more, and the second snowball was actually solid.

He was more occupied with cursing himself for his treacherous heartbeat than aiming, but it was enough to get the point across, and soon Dave found himself grinning, almost exhilarated. Ten minutes later, he was laying face-down in the snow, absolutely soaked and shivering, John beside him not laughing anymore, but humming tonelessly.

When he had dried himself off after the shower that had admittedly been too long and hotter than strictly necessary, it was already getting dark outside. John was still the only other person in the house, and their car was the sole snowy hill when Dave looked out the window.

After dinner, Dave was about exhausted enough to fall asleep right then and there, and John had somehow dug out the motivation to go outside and try to get reception for the twelfth time that day. Even just the cold rush of air that escaped the outside world when John opened and closed the front door was enough to make Dave shiver, and, staring into the flame of the totally overdone candle, he asked himself when he'd become that sensitive. He was probably just coming down with a cold.

Ten, fifteen minutes passed without the door opening again, and by the time the candle had significantly lowered, to a point where Dave couldn't ignore it anymore, he'd begun seeing John frozen to a statue outside, ice hanging from his nose, mouth opened in a fruitless cry for help, phone still in hand. That was something he couldn't let happen, so he told himself to suck it up and go outside to check for signs of intelligent life.

He didn't even stop to put on a jacket or a scarf, because even if it was probably cold enough to put his freezer to shame, preparing for that meant acknowledging that he'd be outside long enough to warrant the jacket.

Outside, there was no John-shaped statue, there was only snow, loads of it, and a very much alive John, pressing his phone to his ear.

“So you're not going to make it?”, he said, Dave could barely just hear it, and felt all his suspicions come true. There was no way anyone could make it up here in this sort of weather, he should have known. Well, he had known, but up to this point, he had still retained a little bit of hope that for once, there would actually be a perfect, just-as-planned Christmas.

John had ended the call, but for some reason he didn't turn around to escape to the house's relative warmth. He kept standing there, staring at his phone's blacked-out screen, and breathed out a suddenly very audible _fuck_.

Dave felt he could relate, and was about to voice just that in as obnoxiously a tone as possible to get him to move inside again. Then, John opened his mouth again.

“This was not how it was supposed to go.”

Something about the way he said it told Dave that it was not exactly about the fact that the others hadn't arrived today, and the words turned around inside his mouth and came out as completely different ones.

“It was supposed to go some way?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (read my other johndave fic too)

**Author's Note:**

> this was supposed to be all in one go, but for the sake of getting at least something out before christmas is over and done with, i did this instead.
> 
> knowing myself it'll probably be finished by next december lol


End file.
